A History of Violence (2005): One of Cronenberg’s Three Best Films, Critical and Commercial Appeal, Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, William Hurt

With this crime thriller, one of the best adaptations of a graphic novel (by John Wagner and Vince Locke), David Cronenberg transforms familiar genre elements into a riveting character study and an explosive portrait of a whole family facing existential crisis, descent, and near demise.

It tells the story of a local diner owner (played by Viggo Mortensen) whose quick-thinking act of heroism unravels hidden identities and deeper impulses in him, his wife and his children.

The text’s subversive wit is attributed to Cronenberg, who worked on the final scenario (uncredited).

Grade: A- (**** out of *****)

A History of Violence
Theatrical release poster

The role was first offered to Harrison Ford, who turned it down.

Mortensen captures both Tom Stall’s gentility and his alter ego Joey Cusack’s capacity for masculine ruthlessness.

This disparity that sends his wife Edie reeling with alternate repulsion and desire.

The film’s violence and sexuality are upsetting, as expected of Cronenberg, who offers sharp observation about how basic instincts can be masked but never contained; and how long-time repression only makes them stronger.

“I am a complete Darwinian,” said Cronenberg, whose film about the survival of the fittest—at all costs.

Cronenberg also saw the film as meditation on the human body and its relationship to violence:

For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. I’m not an atheist, but for me to turn away from any aspect of the human body to me is a philosophical betrayal. And there’s a lot of art and religion whose whole purpose is to turn away from the human body. I feel in my art that my mandate is to not do that. So whether it’s beautiful things—the sexuality part, or the violent part or the gooey part—it’s just body fluids.

It’s when Elliott in Dead Ringer says, “Why are there no beauty contests for the insides of bodies?” It’s a thought that disturbs me. How can we be disgusted by our own bodies? That really doesn’t make any human sense. It makes some animal sense but it doesn’t make human sense so I’m always discussing that in my movies and in this movie in particular.

I don’t ever feel that I’ve been exploitive in a crude, vulgar way, or just doing it to get attention. It’s always got a purpose which I can be very articulate about.

In this movie, we’ve got an audience that’s definitely going to applaud these acts of violence and they do because it’s set up that these acts are justifiable and almost heroic at times. But I’m saying, “If you can applaud that, can you applaud this?” because this is the result of that gunshot in the head. It’s not nice. And even if the violence is justifiable, the consequences of the violence are exactly the same.

The body does not know what the morality of that act was. I’m asking the audience to see if they can contain the whole experience of this violent act instead of just the heroic-dramatic one. I’m saying, ‘Here’s the really nasty effects on these nasty guys but still, the effects are very nasty.’ And that’s the paradox and conundrum.”

Indeed, digging deep into the very nature violence (both reel and real), Cronenberg immerses the viewers in a meditation that refuses to let us indulge in movie violence without paying a heavy price, which could be detrimental to our existence.

The last scene forces audiences to take a stance, sort of what would you do if you were in the position of the patriarchal father and/or one of his children.

Spoiler Alert:

In the last scene, Tom returns home, where the atmosphere is tense as the family sits around for dinner. After some silence, his young daughter hands him a dinner plate, and some moments later, his son offers him a communal plate of food.  But we are never sure whether this particular nuclear family would be able to succeed in restoring normalcy and order.

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